Fatboy40

100% this. I'm absolutely using this evenings game to judge how intelligent Hughes is with tweaking a starting 11 with the aim of improving weaknesses, however I think I may be giving him to much credit as a manager, but we'll see.

Other than a poxy "Social Media Influencer" can someone confirm what Nelly Gao's official position at the club is again? (I seem to recall that he father gave her some sort of token official job)

I'm not so sure he will, remember Yoshi's only start this season was in the first EFL cup game. I'm expecting Yoshi to start, and then Hoedt is back for Chelsea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Hatton#2018_successful_application

He hasn't got a pot to pi ss in.

We should have pushed the boat out and got in Patrick Vieira from the USA, offering him his first Premier League gig, but that would have meant speeding some money and having vision.

Umm... exactly the right thread, I'm emphasing how sh ite Hoedt is, hth

38 minutes in Hoedt tries to clear the ball, kicks it straight back at the same Wolves player, FFS!

OK, fu ck it, there's no conspiracy theory here at all is there now with Hoedt always starting. He could sh it on Hughes pillow and he'd still start. Black and white, it's either.. 1: Hughes has zero skill at all in picking CB's. 2: Those above Hughes are intentionally preventing Yoshi from being in the starting 11 (either through disliking him or a failed attempt to ship him out in the summer).

I'd make sure I was signed up on a bloody good contract first, from my own perspective, so that when the puppets eventually sack me I'd be set up for life (but then I doubt they'd employ me because of this). My first thing to do would be to take all the team to a quiet hotel somewhere for a few days without warning them, puppets not invited or told, take all their smartphones and throw them in a pond. Then spend a couple of days getting to know and understand them, and hopefully come back with the start of a genuine team that want to play for each other, and work on getting rid of those who want no part of it asap.

Like hell would they, they'd be setting up shell companies / working out tax avoidance arrangements / getting out of UK liabilities as soon as they could. This isn't a centrist soft Labour like under Blair / Brown / Darling, this would be hard left full on South American stylee socialism if McDonnell had his way.

Nope, the anagram for that is John McDonnell. Corbyn doesn't particularly scare those in finance but they do worry about him, however McDonnell ever becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer would be catastrophic and run on the pound and collapse of the FTSE would be immense. In a perverse way I'm happy for him to be the shadow CotE, as long as he has that position "big business" will always not support Labour.

I see Starmer is smelling blood in the water and starting to differentiate himself from Corbyn and McDonnell on policy, the early stages of a future leadership bid?

I'm just glad that Klopp decided to slow things down for the second half and protect his players for the EFL Cup game, otherwise that would have gone from a poor result to an absolutely terrible one. # Lemina was horrendous. # Matt Targett is shee ite at taking corners.

Pretty much what I alluded to on another thread, we end up with a CB on the pitch better that Hoedt and get the bonus of a natural leader. 100% something fishy going on here, and as other said Yoshi is a gentleman so we won't find out why at least until he's left the club.

Have to say that watching the game today (at 1080p so not a blurry postage stamp mess) what is Bertrand bringing to the game as the teams captain? Yes he has experience but he's no leader. I'm not sure we've a natural leader in the squad at the moment, or at least in the usual starting 11 that Hughes picks?

I'm so behind you on this, so far this season we've missed a real captain and it shows. I've seen Vestergaard try a few times, but that seems to have dropped off, and Bertrand is no captain. I bang on about Yoshi but he has a positive influence when he plays that I think we massively underestimate the value of.

Just trying to rationalise why our World Cup playing international CB is somehow considered to be a worse choice than Hoedt of all people. I've no idea personally of how Chinese view the Japanese, however I've always assumed that it was more hate than love, and this is an interesting article but Wikipedia is not always accurate... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_China

I don't think this forums software is modern enough to allow "mentions" of other users, however... https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?60250-Saints-2-2-Brighton-Reaction&p=2667022#post2667022 ... with no evidence to counter it it's as valid a reason as any other. Yoshi's a true pro, so we all know he's match fit by now, so there must a be a reason in Hughes head as to why he prefers Hoedt over him or is he be guided by above? (I'm not aware of Chinese culture but could Ji Sheng Gao be instigating this as Yoshi is Japanese?).

So, third game in and still no start for the solid international World Cup playing Maya Yoshida, but continued starts for Hoedt. I can't help but let my mind run away with me and start to consider all manner of wild conspiracy theories

Save yourself a few pennies and visit this instead... https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintsFC/

Hopefully Maya is royally ****ed off after Hughes picked that pile of s hit e Hoedt over him today!

I expect Sally does that regularly, she's got more balls than John has

It's a bit desperate of me but does anyone have an invite for SmoothStreams that they have spare

Doh!... https://order-order.com/2018/08/07/corbyn-bbc-biased-on-israels-right-to-exist/